Ezra Laderman

Born: 1924

Died: 2015

Nationality: American

Publisher: G. Schirmer

Ezra Laderman's compositions range from solo instrumental and vocal works to large-scale choral and orchestral music. He also wrote music to the Academy Award-winning films "The Eleanor Roosevelt Story" and "Black Fox," and an opera based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Laderman incorporated a lyrical style into a contemporary context, using tonal material in combination with atonal elements and seeking out unusual formal structures for his compositions. His writing evolved over the years in that the music, although rigorously conceived, speaks with immediacy and accessibility.

Laderman was commissioned three times by the Philadelphia Orchestra, twice by the National, Louisville and Chicago Symphonies as well as from the New York Philharmonic, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, Syracuse, Denver, Columbus, Albany, and New Haven Symphony Orchestras. In addition he wrote for such distinguished artists as Jean-Pierre Rampal, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Sherrill Milnes, Aldo Parisot, Samuel Baron, David Shifrin, Ransom Wilson, Judith Raskin, Elmar Oliveira, Erica Morini, Nathaniel Rosen, Stephen Kates, Toby Appel, and Leonard Arner, among many others.